Michael Beckwith Talks About George Floyd's Death, Racism, & How To FIGHT INJUSTICE | Lewis Howes

Some of the police chiefs around the nation have been saying that George Floyd is going to change policing. I think this can be one of those moments where you have this moral outrage.

It's been an emotional journey for this year, just a year.

Yeah. Oh, you mean with everything pandemic, everything. I've cried more in these last two weeks than I've cried in like a couple of years.

Wow.

You know, just seeing the video and memories I've had of racism that I've experienced and, you know, it just bubbled up, you know?

Well, welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We're super excited about our guest today. The inspirational Reverend Michael Beckwith. Thank you so much for being here, my man. Appreciate you. We've had you on before and it was one of our favorite episodes and interviews and people keep talking about it today. And we are in an incredible time right now where there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of frustration, and there's a lot of miseducation, especially by white people. There's a lot of white privilege that has been unaddressed and I think for millennials have a lot of a lack of education understanding. and I wanted to bring you on because you are such a leader of spiritual hope and inspiration and you're rooted in love. And I think that's what I appreciate about you the most is your principles and guiding root of love. And that's what I want us to talk about today is how can we be more loving as a society? How can we be more loving as human beings? And how can we be a solution to the problems in the world right now. And I wanted to ask you first, how are you feeling?

You know, right at this moment, I'm feeling good. You know, I guess over the last couple of weeks, I probably have cried more than I've cried in a couple of years. You know, just witnessing the atrocity and the public lynching that we all saw, you know, obviously brought tears to my eyes. And every time I see it, it's still a visceral, emotion about that because it brings up memories as well of me growing up and experiencing that kind of racism. Not that kind of racism, but racism, period.

For white people like myself, who most white people are probably never experienced any type of racism the way that you have, in general, I'm speaking. What are some of the types of things that you had to face growing up? To give context to people like myself who never had to walk down the street, you know, wondering if someone's coming behind you, a police officer or... All of that.

You know, in the education, I can remember being graded down in my papers because I was... we had to write like a future autobiography. So in junior high school, I wrote I was going to follow in my father's footsteps in law, go to USC, do X, Y, and Z. And the teacher said, you,'re never gonna go to USC. You know, she dimmed my hope. I mean, I went to USC, by the way. I went to Morehouse, and I transferred to USC. But I can remember her saying that people like me, I shouldn't dream that big. I remember telling my mother about that. My mother went up to the school and handled her business.

What year is this or what year is this?

This is junior high school. So this is back in the '60s.

Yeah.

You know?

People like you, meaning what?

People-- Black people.

Wow.

You know.

Did she say black people?

No, she said your people, something like that. I remember her name. I'm not gonna say her name. She's probably passed on, or maybe he's had a great change. Who knows? Okay, so that's the educational piece that was-- that was in school. It was in school. Okay. You know, I was on the track team in high school. We jogged around my block, pulled over by the police, you know, where you going? I got my sweatsuit. I have my LA high. You know, I'm jogging. I'm on the track team. you know, so my mother would make us go down to the police department and file a complaint. That was a part of the rules of our family. If a police officer stops you, get their badge number, file the complaint. Now, if we didn't do that, we got in trouble, you know. So my mother and dad, you know, basically had to talk with us about how to get home safely, how to deal with police officers. Yes, sir. No, sir. Get the badge number. file a complaint. You know, so that was just part of our upbringing.

This is in the 60s, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s.

Yeah, 50s, 60s, 70s. I mean, I could give you, I don't want to go down that whole list, but I remember at Morehouse College, you know, we rented a hotel for a party. You know, it was like our own version of a frat party. And police came, remember, threw me and my guys up against the wall. what are we doing here? He says, we have a room. You can't have a room here, you know, and threw us up against the wall, arrested us for criminal, what was it? Some kind of this is mischief or something. I don't remember what it was.

But they're essentially finding a way to make you wrong.

Right. Yeah, so I can go down the list. Right before I started Agape, I spoke at a community in Fullerton. The congregation overwhelmingly wanted me to be their minister. I said, I really don't think I'm a fit for this, but I'll be a guest speaker. They really wanted me. Threw my name into the hat. The congregation wanted me, and then a small group of people started saying that if we bring this black man to be the minister of this church, the property value is going to go down, people are going to start parking their cars on the lawn, there's going to be litter and trash everywhere. You know, and they started this whole thing. And what's interesting about that is that the people in that community, which was mainly a white church, they didn't know that their friend that they were sitting next to was a racist. All the racists thought that everybody was thinking like them. And all the people that were progressive and just into, you know, loving humanity thought everybody was thinking like them. But I show up and everybody gets revealed. And so I eventually said, no, this is not my place to be. And I started Agape.

When did you start Agape?

1986. So right before that, that particular church, it was a big earthquake, split.

The Fuller Theological Seminary, wow.

It split, they had to evacuate their building. And then eventually they hired this woman, and they hired a white woman really fast. They went into a little diversity, so they hired a woman. And then she stole a bunch of money and left. Oh man. All the things they were afraid of happening happened by a white woman. Wow. You know, but anyway, I don't need to discuss this.

This happened at every stage of your life.

Oh, absolutely.

From education as a little boy to high school to college to in the workplace.

Right.

Do you feel like after you started Agape, you know, for the last 24 years now, do you continue to feel racism in LA? As a leader in spirituality, as a leader of a church, as a leader of humanity.

Agape, we're in our 34th year.

34 years.

Yeah, it's a extremely diverse community. We wanted to build, be an example of the beloved community that Dr. King talked about. You know, we're all people worshipping together, serving together, growing together. So I'm kind of in a little bubble where that's concerned. And because I'm kind of known, I don't really have a lot of things coming at me in that way. I know it's there. And the beautiful thing about the space of Agape is that people come and we get to deal with those issues. Very soon we're going to have some dialogues where people are going to be able to just come together, like after the Rodney King situation, after certain things, the community comes together. Now it'll be on Zoom, comes together and actually talks it out. You know, they talk about privilege, they talk about how it feels to be black, how it feels to be a woman, how it feels to be gay, you know, whatever the case may be. So it's a safe space for people to really get into the conversation and not avoid it, and then take ownership of perceptions that you might have that you may have inherited from your parents or whatever and begin to dismantle and transmute that. So I do know that racism is alive. Racism is still alive. It's systemic in the culture. I mean, when you look at it from a historical context, you look at 1619 when the first, I don't like to call them slaves, say forced immigrants, you know, that they turned into slaves, arrived, and the United States wasn't even a union yet. You know, it took these Africans to Virginia, and thus began slavery. Now the idea was in order to justify it, the good Christian people at that time had to say they were less than human. They were like a horse or a dog. you know, cow. So that way they could abuse them because they're not really abusing a human being. They're abusing these people from Africa that aren't human. So that became a part of the narrative within the fabric of our society. So then when slavery was abolished, then you had the Jim Crow era. You had public lynchings of black men. The point being laws have come into effect to stop segregation, Jim Crowism, public lynching, slavery, et cetera. But the underlying narrative is still active in many people. So at this particular time in human history, you see that the veil has been lifted. So you actually see racial superiority. You see the supremacy rising up, being very bold, like they were in Charleston, very bold about who they are, primarily because of who we have in the office at this time, making it easy for that to show up.

Why do you feel like they're showing up that way?

I think it's two reasons. One, we're in a moment of-- we're in an apocalyptic moment, the apocalypse, which means-- apocalypse simply means the lifting of the veil. When you lift up the veil, it means what was hidden is now visible. So all these things that have been hidden for a long time or denied, or people saying, you,'re exaggerating, we can now see it. Right, right.

You know, I'm seeing all these videos saying, if it wasn't on videotape, you wouldn't believe it.

You wouldn't even believe it. Oh, you're exaggerating. You're making that up. Yeah. You know, so I think because of the energy of people on the planet who have been praying and meditating and doing spiritual work, the planet itself raising its vibration, things are easier to be seen. And then we have this evolutionary trigger who's like a transformational Mr. Magoo in the office who incites a lot of things so it becomes easier to be seen. So people feel emboldened because of who's in office. He says, oh, you know what I mean? He says certain things. They're like, okay, let's go rally. And so all of this can be seen now, which was hidden before. And so that's the good and bad news. Yeah.

Social media as well, being a landscape for people, every person to have a voice publicly and show these things.

Right. So the good news is we see it. You know, the bad news, it exists. The good news is once you, you can't heal something that you're denying. If you deny that you have cancer, you know, no, that's just a pain in my knee or whatever, and you know, go check. You know, that's not gonna heal it by you denying. that you have an issue. You have to actually examine it and see it and then provide what is necessary for your healing. So now that we can actually see abuse of power and force by police departments, we can actually see racism. Now we can begin to have a conversation as to how to dismantle it. And I think that's the time we're living in now. That's the good news. of the protest.

What's the bad news?

The bad news is that the narrative is being hijacked by violent anarchists that are primarily white. You know, they're trying to steal the narrative of the fact that this man, George Floyd, and others that preceded him, you know, unarmed, handcuffed, pretty much subdued, on the ground, on the ground, was murdered. I have to say by four officers, you know, the one that had the knee, the two that were sitting on him, and the one that was, you know, not doing anything. You know, so I think we got to ask ourselves sometimes, where are we not doing anything? Where are we seeing something? Or hearing a terrible conversation, hearing a racial slur, and we don't do anything. You know, so he represents the people that See stuff, don't say anything. The man who had the knee on the neck represents just pure aggression, racism, abuse of power. The two that were laying on him, you know, aiding and abetting. So everybody has to look at themselves. Am I aiding and abetting? Do I have a knee on somebody's neck? Or am I just looking and not saying anything? I just don't want to have the conversation. It doesn't affect me. It affects us all.

It affects us all. And I was reading some anti-racism literature and there was a section in this literature talking about for white people of how to talk about this for the first time. And some of the questions were, and the first time you're talking about it, I'm afraid I don't know enough. The second thing is I'm afraid to say the wrong thing. The third thing is I don't know what steps to take. Right. And I think, again, coming from a place of white privilege of not having to experience these types of systemic challenges, I think this is what a lot of white people feel. They don't know how to bring it up, what to say. And it's not white people's responsibility to ask people to educate them. but it's more responsibility to do the research and do the work.

Yeah.

But what I guess feedback would you give to the white community on how to be empowered and not be afraid?

Two things. One, I saw Jane Fonda recently speaking to this and she was being asked about it and she's progressive, you know, climate change, anti-war. She's spoken on a lot of issues and she admitted that she was aware racism obviously exists, but she was aware that she was ignorant of a lot of the ways by which brown and black people experience their life on a daily basis.

The nuances.

The nuances and walking into a room suddenly you're the other or whatever. So she started researching. She said for the past three years she went and got books, started studying, started reading the historical context, the different ways that this has been perpetrated throughout the years. and she's much more sensitive to it now. Now she can speak to it. So to answer to your question, it has to be research. Now what people need to understand is that racism, bigotry, is not going to be dismantled by black and brown people. It's going to be dismantled by white people. You know, we're pointing our finger to it. That just happened. He pulled me over for no reason. I was fired even though that person was hired after me or whatever, you know. We can point our finger to it, but it has to be those that have a level of privilege that actually assist in the dismantling process of that.

When white people, I mean, I feel like, hopefully I don't speak in two general terms, but I feel like millennials, most millennials probably aren't aware of this happening in the Midwest. They probably aren't aware. I speak for myself growing up. I grew up in a small town in Ohio. My dad brought in seven exchange students from around the world from five years old until I was about 10. That came to live with us. He wanted us to see the world by not having to travel. He brought people from Japan, France, Germany, Brazil. So from a young age, I got to live with brothers and sisters who were 17, 18 of different cultures and races. But there were two moments in my life when I realized, oh, like things aren't okay in the world. One, when I was eight years old, my brother got sentenced to six to 25 years for selling drugs to an undercover cop. He got out on four and a half years in good behavior. But I remember at eight years old, we went to go to the visiting room of the prison for the first time, where they allowed families to come in on the weekends for a certain time. And I go to the prison and we, you know, my older siblings are there, my parents are there, we go into the prison, we're in the visiting room and we're sitting at a table of chairs and as I'm looking around at all the other families and inmates, we're essentially the only white people.

Right.

I remember looking around thinking, huh, as an eight-year-old, like, why are we the only white people here?

Right, right.

You know, and that was just my first idea of like, oh, this is something happening.

That'S a great awakening because we represent 17% of the population, but about 80 or 90% of people in jail. I know it's in the community. Black people aren't doing all those crimes.

Right, right, right. So that was my first, like, okay, I'm an eight-year-old, I'm trying to figure out who I am in the world, what is the world, what am I, I'm a being, I'm growing. And I noticed this. The second blatant instant was when I was living in Huntsville, Alabama in the south. And I remember driving from Columbus, Ohio to Huntsville, Alabama. And as I crossed the border from Tennessee to Alabama, I noticed Confederate flags. And I noticed I was driving behind a pickup truck that had a Confederate flag and a shotgun hanging in the back of the pickup truck. And I went to go play arena football in Huntsville, Alabama. I was one of the few white.

Guys and it was all black guys.

And just hanging out with them for six months, all my friends, teammates, and going into the restaurants and going to stores and driving with them, just noticing and hearing these stories I go, huh, like this stuff doesn't happen to me. And I don't have this type of anxiety or fear. And those kind of two moments stick out for me as, wow, there's an issue and there's a problem that I have never had to face. and white people have, we might have faced other problems.

Right, everybody has issues.

But we don't face this.

Yeah, right. That's just, yeah, so those are wake-up moments for you. We actually had a direct experience of something. As I was saying earlier, we represent approximately 17% of the population.

In the US.

In the US.

And how many, what's the population in prison?

About 80-90% are people of color. Now, we're not doing all those crimes. Everybody else is not innocent, you know what I mean? But we're targeted. So, you know, I remember going in department stores and you right away somebody's following you, thinking you're gonna steal something. I'm not a thief, you know, but you're targeted.

So, having an extra eye on you.

Here's an extra eye, here's a black guy coming in, what's he gonna steal? You know, so I think we're targeted because of the color of our skin. So, and then, you know, justice, you know, they say justice is blind. We've known But justice peaks that justice raises up that little blindfold and if you're black, Mexican or poor, you get a different standard of justice than if you're white and rich.

You get a harder punishment.

Harder punishment. Plus you gotta plead out. You have to plead guilty. Plead guilty. Even if you're innocent, sometimes it's better to plead guilty because you're gonna lose, you have a public defender, you can't afford it, you're gonna probably lose if you go to the jury. which means you're gonna get more time. So you have many people in jail who didn't do it, but it was just better just to plead out, get this thing over, and move on. That's the legal system.

That's the legal system. That's the issue that we need to fix as well.

Justice needs to be blind. You know, I was jokingly saying the other day that, you know, we should have a system when a person comes in, you don't even know what color he is. He's in a box or something. You don't see him. The jury can't see whether it's a white guy or a black guy. That's interesting. You know, and you have the defense attorney, you have the prosecutor. It's all based on evidence. It's all based on evidence only. Oh, that black guy, I know he did it. I know he did it, you know, whatever the case may be. I mean, of course, that's probably never going to happen, but I thought, how do I make justice blind? For real.

That's interesting. You know, this has been happening for obviously decades. You were talking about the riots in the 90s in LA.

You were here.

This has been happening for decades, but it seems to be this moment is bigger than the racial marches of the past, the unjust killings of the past, all these things. Why this moment, in your opinion?

I think a couple of reasons. One, things have been going on for a long time with no justice. We can go, Trayvon Martin, we can go case after case after case where there wasn't any justice meted out. police officers were never convicted. So I think it was a buildup of energy. And so this particular one, right after the Ahmad Aubrey killing, where he's jogging and two supremacists track him down and kill him, short period of time we have this happening. So I think it's a buildup of energy. and some of the police chiefs around the nation have been saying that George Floyd is going to change policing. I mean, these are police chiefs coming out and saying he's really going to change policing. So I think if you go back to 1955 when Emmett Till was killed, he was from Chicago, went down to the South to visit some relatives, and a woman said that he, a white woman said that he had whistled at her. They broke into his house, took him out of the house, these guys, killed him, murdered him. That created such an outrage that it put a spark into the civil rights movement. I think this can be one of those moments where you have this moral outrage because everybody is seeing, there's no if, ands, and buts about it. You know, I mean, they may see the video. You see the video, they may try to do some things with the autopsy and try to, get a lesser sentence for the guy. But you see him sitting, you see him with his knee on there, and people are saying to him, you,'re killing him. He's saying, I can't breathe. He's asking for his mother. You know, he can't, get off of him, man, he can't breathe. You can't, you're killing him. You know, he's urinating, you know. So I think that particular scene could be a water shared moment like Emmett Till was, in which people are just like, Enough is enough. And we may get into some really some major shifts in policing because hiring, you have to really get into the psychology of these guys. I mean, what background do they have? You have to have a greater training to be a barber.

That's what I heard.

Than to be a police officer with a gun. So it has to be psychological training, it has to be sensitivity training. And I'm not talking about a two-week little class. You have to really bring up to bear.

Yeah, and I know there's, you know, I can only imagine the anxiety and stress of being a police officer as well.

Absolutely.

Because there are bad people who come at you and punch you and bring out a knife where you need to react and respond. This is not that time when you can see there's no offense happening against you. There's nothing you need to defend yourself against to do something like this? Do you feel like it's more the uprising against the lack of justice after something like this happens or just the act of it happening?

I think it's a combination of systemic racism that people feel for a long time and the lack of justice. Those two combined.

It's just like, oh, he was fired and that's it.

Yeah. Right?

It's not, there's no justice beyond that, right?

Yeah. So I think it becomes a powder keg.

Yeah.

And seeing somebody helpless wasn't like, I mean you've seen situations where, and this is egregious as well, where the man is running away and he gets shot in the back and killed. Terrible. Matter of fact, that police officer doing 20 years. That was like one time, one out of two, three times where somebody actually was convicted. He got 20. So you see the buildup of that, but yeah. lack of justice, and then just the, you know, let me just say this. Some of these psychological research projects have shown that by the time a young black boy is seven years old, he has experienced the nuance of racism so many times that he builds up a kind of psychological antibody. It's like a little shell. It's like a-- An armor. An armor that just kind of starts building and building and building, and by the time the individual is Then he goes on to 17, he has a thing. He doesn't even know what it is consciously. It has a thing to survive in the world, you know? And so... You already have to survive.

In the world as a human. Now you have to survive plus be aware of this racial injustice happening all the time.

Absolutely.

It's funny because in December 2019, I kept thinking to myself, Wow, isn't 2020 a great number? The year for perfect vision, the year for clarity, So you're gonna be able to see...

It's like we're getting it.

Right? Isn't it? I mean, it's like, I don't think this is the best way to see it, but if this is the way to see it, then I'm happy that people are opening their eyes, like you said, lifting the veil. What is the importance of healing work on the inside versus healing work on the outside?

Yeah, it has to be both. So there's a conversation that I have with people of color. a conversation that I have with white people, people of color. I teach them to not see themselves as victims, to begin to heal the wounds and the scar tissue within themselves, to come to a sense of empowerment, go into some deep levels of forgiveness so you're not carrying the thought forms of resentment, animosity. This is deep work though, it's not like I'm gonna go forgive, you know, and so that you begin to see yourself as an African American or a Mexican or whatever, Latino, whatever the case may be. But beyond that, you are this eternal being, you're a spiritual being having this human incarnation. That's great work. To the white brothers and sisters, I teach them about compassion. Compassion allows you to see something, you walk in somebody else's moccasins. When you went to that, We went to prison to visit your brother. You were a little kid, but you looked around and you said, Something's odd about this. Why is everybody in here black? You start to see things from somebody else's perspective. So instead of just turning a blind eye, they're complaining again. Oh, they're pointing the finger again. Oh, they're making excuses again. You have a level of compassion. You do some research. What is the what is the history of this? So there's two conversations. And then there's a conversation we all have together about what you brought up at the very beginning, you know, about love and compassion and building a kind and just global society. It has to be built on love. It's not going to be built just on law itself. Just as we've had laws against slavery, we've had laws against Jim Crow, we had laws against segregation. We have those laws. Sometimes they're enforced, sometimes they're not. But unless in our heart of hearts we come to an awareness of what love is, and it has nothing to do with the color of skin, has something to do with who we are as spiritual beings, then you can only have an enlightened society with enlightened people. You can only have a loving society with loving people. And so laws are important. I want laws. I want to be able to say, It's illegal for you to lynch me. I want that law. But there has to be something else as well, and that's the shifting of our consciousness, and that's deep work. That's why Agape exists. That's why spiritual centers exist. That's why we have self-empowerment in order to go in and take full responsibility for our own life, our own perceptions, our own opinions. What opinion am I holding that's not congruent with the truth of humanity's excellence.

This is not an over the night, overnight, read one book, you're... You're it. You've got the healing you need. This is years, decades of the work. It's work, is what I'm hearing you say. It's not a... You know, when I have gone through healing of deep things from my childhood, even doing workshops and a few months of therapy, or what you may be was helpful, but it still takes years of, okay, there's triggers and you have to constantly remind yourself and have compassion and forgive and let go of that pain and that frustration.

It becomes a way of life.

It needs to be a way of life.

It's not just a weekend seminar. It's like, this is how I live my life. You know, I have a level of introspection where I take responsibility for what's going on in here, you know? I work with it. That's called becoming aware, becoming conscious. And then I have a way of living where I'm doing that on a regular basis. You can call it prayer, you can call it meditation, you can call it fellowshiping with progressive, high-minded people.

People who say to themselves, you know what? I'm a stay-at-home mom. I've got a couple of kids. I'm going through so many challenges in my life right now. I just lost my job. I've got no money. I've got so many problems in my own life that problems about racial injustice or problems about women's rights or problems about gay rights, all these other rights. I've got so much going on in my own life. I don't have time to think about it, to educate myself, to ask these questions. What would you say to people who think like that? Who are just so overwhelmed with their own life?

Yeah.

That maybe they're like...

I would say that many people are like that. They're just in a little bit of a struggle from day to day just to survive. So I understand that survival ethic. And I think that if an individual, one, established an intention, if you establish an intention, to this say, I'm intending to become a better version of myself. I'm intending to understand what's going on. doesn't mean you have to run out tomorrow and jump in a protest or write a petition. But if you establish an intention, something's going to come to you based on that intention. Now, most people, as I've taught over the years, suffer from an intention deficit disorder. They don't have any intention. So they just kind of react every day to things that are going on that they stay in survival mode. But if a person wakes up and actually has an intention, The universe by law will begin to bring into that person's life a way to fulfill that intention. A book may show up. A neighbor may start having a conversation with them about something. They may see a special on television. They may hear us on this podcast and then say, I never thought about it that way. Let me think about that. you know, but to have no intention means that you're just up for grabs at whatever the popular emotional mental contagion is that's going throughout the world. We're not here to live an unintentional life. So during this time in human history, we want people to establish an intention. I want to learn more about this. I want to become a better person. I want to be on the right side of history. Just, that's a good attention right there.

Yeah.

I'm going to be on the right side of history when all this goes down. I want to be the one to say, you know what? Before I left the planet, I helped build a better society. It may have been just with my neighbors around my neighborhood. Doesn't mean I have to go out, you know, into the whole world and protest. Maybe it's just the conversations I'm having with the lady across the street. you know, then we get into a dialogue and suddenly we, oh, that's a way of looking at it. Oh my God, I need to think about that.

Yeah, the moment-to-moment intention, the reflection of those moments. How should people, in your opinion, address protesting and in-the-moment reactions?

There's two levels. One, the protest that the peaceful protests that have happened is a proclamation that one, this has been going on too long, and that two, something must be done finally. And America has always, through the First Amendment, given us everyone the opportunity to speak. So that should not be quelled at all. Then there are those who have nefarious ideas using the protest, using the protest to loot, using the protest to steal the narrative, to go into some kind of anarchy. You know, I saw a video of someone that I know trying to stop this white guy in this black outfit. He was a white guy and a white girl spraying Black Lives Matter onto this business. And they're saying, you,'re white. You have to ask me if you.

Can put that up there.

Don't do that in my name. We're not here to destroy anything. Did you see that?

I saw it. Yeah.

And so there's two levels.

She's saying, we're here peacefully protesting. These people are vandalizing. It's not us.

It's not us. So on the one level, the protests keep the pedal to the metal. It's like, we're not gonna forget, you know, let's see justice. Not only see justice in this one case, Well, let's begin to see individual police departments look at their policies. I mean, this particular guy had like 18, I don't know if they were infractions, but you know, listen, if you're on the job and you pat a girl on the butt, this is zero tolerance, you're fired the next day. It's not like, oh, okay, don't do it again. Not today.

He's got a pink slip today, yeah.

Not today, you're gone. So if an officer who's to enforce the law, to enforce the law, has 18 complaints and still able to carry a gun and there's something wrong with the system.

The system.

With the system, you see. So I think that some of the protest is about that, not just about that officer. But let's look at the system and begin to create a uniform way of hiring, training, and then pulling out the bad apples, because I know a lot of really beautiful police officers. I have police officers, friends.

Big hearts, I care about.

Black, white, Asian, Latin, I mean, you know, so it's not a condemnation on police officers. But the system itself allows for the bad apples and the bad actors to stay and to affect other people. you know, sometimes you may have a, somebody's coming in all wanting, I'll be realistic, I want to protect and serve my neighborhood, and then he gets involved with some bad apples, and after a while in order for him to stay in the club he has to go along with the program, you know. So yeah, the system needs to be changed.

I mean, for those that want to help, you're saying white people need to make the change.

Change.

We're the ones that need to make the change, right? Black people have been the ones pointing at the problem. We're the ones that need to be allies and educating ourselves and being a stand for equality. What do you think is the right balance for white people in their lives to say, okay, I'm gonna champion this. I'm gonna stand up for this because I believe in equality. I believe in equal rights. I don't want to see my brothers and and sisters have unfair things happen in the world. What is the balance between advocating, fighting, marching, protesting, standing up, posting on social media, dialoguing with their friends, calling governors, signing petition, what, I mean, is it...

All of that is helpful. When you said our black brothers and sisters, First of all, that's the context. You know, we're all living in this fabric of society. So it's not just what's happening to black people. That's important, yes. But this is our society. It has to be a context that we're all in this together. So something is happening to Brother over there. That's my society. That's my neighborhood. That's my city. You know, so I have to ask myself. This is-- people have to ask the sincere question, what is it that's mine to do? Everyone has gifts, talents, and capacities. Everyone can't do everything, but everyone can do something. So perhaps the woman that you talked about, that stay-at-home mom, she's taking care of her kids, she's trying to survive, perhaps what she can do is actually pick up the phone and call her councilman and her congressman and her senator, or text them or email them and say, you know what? I think what I saw was unjust, I like to see justice. You know, perhaps that's what she can do. Perhaps someone else, like you were talking about millennials earlier, they have the energy to go out.

March all night.

You know what I mean? And the beautiful thing about millennials are this, because of the, because of music and because of social media, dance. Millennials, a lot of them, not all, like you said we don't want to generalize, They don't have a, the racism and the homophobia, it's not a big thing to many millennials. That's just, you know, that's my girlfriend, you know, that's my, you know. They don't, they've come a lot, so they have to take leadership.

They're more open-minded.

They're way more open-minded than people that grew up in the 50s, you know. So I would say everybody can't do everything, but everybody can do something. So everyone has to be sincere with themselves and say, what is it that's mine to do? You have a podcast. You're opening up your podcast to have this dialogue. Hopefully one thing that we say may make somebody go, let me see what I can do. So everybody has something. There's no one that doesn't have anything. Again, from the neighbor across the street to a petition to writing a congressperson to being on the streets to some of my security people who are on the streets stopping people from looting. I mean, they can do that because they're very strong, martial artists, you know, ex-sheriffs. I mean, they can handle themselves in the street, you know, so their job, they went out at night and stopped people from looting. They saved eight businesses. Right. Eight that were about to be burned. You know, they were able to stop that. That's what they could do, and that's what they did. Now, the woman staying at home, I wouldn't ask her to do that. You better stay at home.

Do your part.

Do your part.

The skills and talents you have. One of the things I'm hearing from all people is who is leading this charge? Is there a leader organizing the actual steps that we can do like action as opposed to-- There's no hierarchy in this. People are peacefully marching, people are rioting, people are doing this, people are posting. We're only one week out of this happening still. So I think this is a lot of confusion for people and just also three months locked indoors, it's like this anger and resentment and frustration. It's like now we're just getting out and unleashing all the energy of three months locked indoors.

Even from that. Right, right, right, right, right. I think that that's the next step. Like right now you have the anger of the unheard, the protest for justice, now there has to be strategy. There are some people that have strategy. I mean they're not necessarily on the news, but there are people in the legal aspect of life that are working on strategy. And please, and have been working on strategy, have been doing things to try to push the needle forward. Van Jones, I mean there's a lot of people doing work. you know, and I think good news is that that work will probably speed up. The bad news is that there are people that are impatient saying what you've been doing hasn't been working because here another person has been killed. So I think that we have to be more vocal with the strategy and with the plan. And we have to look at Justice Department, we have to look at the prison industrial system. You have to look at the sick care system masquerading as a health care system. That again is run on greed. If a poor person goes to the hospital, he's not going to get the same treatment as a person who has the greatest insurance in the world. So all these systems are up for change.

So many systems to put energy behind to try to change, right?

Right. And all based on profit motive, not necessarily humanity. So again, the veil is lifted. So now we see it all. When COVID came through, it revealed that the most vulnerable people in our society have the least access to the resources. We knew it. But COVID revealed it.

Yes.

40 million unemployment, all this stuff. It's all there. So I think that if everybody asked, what is it that I can do? And then very importantly, we have to be able to articulate. This is where strategy comes in. You have to be able to articulate what the kind in just global society looks like, what the ideal looks like. Then you begin to strategize as how to get there. So right now there's a lot of dialogue about what isn't working. There's no justice here. The most vulnerable aren't taken care of. So you have to move from that to what does it look like to take care of the most vulnerable? What does it look like to have a real health care system? What does it look like to have a real justice system? So that has to be articulated. Without vision, people perish. So if you don't have a vision of where you're walking, then you're just kind of walking in circles. So you have all these different steps. There are people who are visionary, people who can articulate the vision. People who are good at strategy, people who are good at doing the work.

Execution, yeah.

You know, everybody's important.

Yes.

Everybody's important.

So I wanna go back to these three questions that white people are, you know, asking in general. I'm afraid I don't know enough. I'm afraid to say the wrong things and offend people.

Yeah.

And I don't know what steps to take.

Yeah.

For me, if I could end this today, Like as a man of white privilege of never going through this injustice, like I don't want this to happen. So I want to know what I could do if I could do it today. And I think a lot of white people, I don't want to speak in general terms, but a lot of white people I know, they don't want this either. So nobody wants it. We're ready to do the work. Now, like once we figure out the right strategy, we'll execute.

Well, here's the deal, you know, You're talking about white privilege, that's a big step. Primarily because it's never been acknowledged before. You know, I was having a conversation with a woman in Agape about it. You know, she kind of knew about it, but at the same time it wasn't blatant.

A white woman.

Yeah. And then something happened. Her son stole, well let's say borrowed, her and her husband's car in the middle of the night. They were asleep and he snuck into the garage, stole the car, went and picked up his boys.

Yeah, did something in my town.

Yeah. Yeah. And got pulled over by the police. And they said, go home. They said, get a license. He's like 14, 15 years old. He said, no, sir. He said, you don't have a license? He said, no. Whose car is this? My dad's.

Oh, and he looked in the back seat.

What are you guys doing? Smoking weed. Two white guys in the back seat. One white guy in the front. He says, you guys go home right now. Now, if that would have been four black guys, They would have been, they would have been, they had their first record, fingerprints, in jail, you know. So I told her, this is a really good opportunity, a teaching moment, for you to teach your son about white privilege. That if he would have been a black guy driving and gotten pulled over, it would have been a totally different scenario. So she is starting conversations with white women about white privilege. She has felt compelled to do that.

You know, for white people who, I mean, we in general, again, there's been other challenges we've faced, right? People have their own challenges, but we've never had to face these types of challenges. We've gotten off. We've, you know, let, had a pass. We've had all these different things where we don't fear for our lives. If we get in trouble, that we're gonna get shot and killed. We don't have that type of fear. And it's, I think it's hard for people to have perspective. unless they see it like they're seeing it now.

Yeah.

So, but they still are, I mean, if you haven't felt it, how do you gain that perspective? If you're never like, well, you got.

You got, you got to, you got to do what Jane Fonda said. You really got to be interested in study, and you have to say to people of color, I don't, you can say, I don't want to offend. Yeah, but I do want to be educated. Yeah. I do want to have this conversation. I mean, you called me. I said, hey, I want to have a conversation. Let's have this conversation. I wasn't offended. Let's have it. And I think people are nervous, but you know what? We have to get over that skittishness. I'll tell you an experience. I was in South Africa. I've been many times, but I was there before Nelson Mandela was elected. And they had called me over to lead vision process throughout the country. because they had been fighting against apartheid for so long that they had lost the vision of how they wanted their society to be. This is what some of the people who were bringing me over were saying. So I went over with about a number of my spiritual practitioners, small choir, and I was doing the vision process around the nation, and we were in Soweto, our choir practicing with the Soweto choir. That was during the time Soweto was listed as the most violent city in the world. Okay, and all of a sudden the assistant choir director comes into the room and says, Quick, get all the white people out of here. The rebels are coming to get them. And my people started laughing. Because, you know, it was integrated choir. My choir is integrated. And they started laughing. I said, He's serious. I said, Everybody get on the bus. So everybody got on the bus. I said, White folks get under the seat. No way. Yeah. Black people sit on the seat. So the white people are hiding under the seat. The black people are sitting on the seat so nobody could see them under there, you know, have their blankets over their legs and everything. And it's very tense. So I got up to the front and got in the microphone. I had to break the ice a little bit. So I said, listen, if they come in here looking for the white people, I'm gonna say these white people belong to me. You know? Oh my goodness. Everybody started laughing, you know. And we were driving out of Soweto. And busloads of these individuals coming with guns and all kinds of stuff were coming into Soweto. We were going out. So all they could see was black people on the bus. So we got out, got back to the hotel and processed all night. The white people had never had a direct experience of being a minority, never had a direct experience of their life being on the line. This is how black people had been living for decades. you know what I mean? And it changed many of them. I mean, they still go to Agape now, and it shifted their perspective because they had a direct experience of what it felt like to be the other and to have your life threatened. So I wouldn't advocate that for everybody.

But maybe a simulated training in school of like history.

I thought about that over the years, you know, like having people just move through through the experience, have men move through the experience of harassment, of what it feels like. You know, have white people move through the experience of what it feels like to, you know, you're not going to be hired, you know, move through the experience of, you're going to be fired first when it's time to be fired. Move through the experience of a police officer, you know, you're driving and you're probably going to be pulled over if you're driving at night and you're the only one, you know, or whatever. But I think that that's what compassion is. Part of compassion is being able to walk in the moccasins of another person. So it can be done mentally, viscerally, emotionally. How would you feel if, I put it like this, how would you feel if George Floyd was your brother? That was your dad. He had two children. You know, 'cause that was you. You know, you have to, people have to get a sense of that, that birth's compassion. So I would say, one, don't be afraid of having the conversation. This is the time to have the conversation. And you don't have to complete everything in one conversation. But if you just open the door, then that becomes territory that you can talk about. Because before you might only be talking about sports. Or you might only be talking about that latest movie that you saw on Netflix or whatever. Now that territory is open. And if I see Lewis, I see so-and-so, we can talk about it. We can have conversation and have greater insights.

I think one of the things that I've seen in the last week since all this has come about on social media is I think people are afraid to-- people who are afraid who are on the right side to speak up for being judged one way or another for saying the wrong things, for people being shamed for doing it the wrong way or. Yeah, I feel like certain people feel judged, like no matter what I do or say, I'm gonna get attacked.

Yeah.

And I think you need to overcome, like, it's gonna happen.

It's gonna. It's gonna happen.

You're gonna be judged for, oh, you're just doing this to do it, or do you really care? Or you put the wrong hashtag or.

Right.

It's like you don't actually, you aren't really educated. I think you just got to be willing to say, I'm going to get judged. You're going to be, people are not going to like you. People are going to be upset at you. You're going to offend people. You're going to hurt people. And I think going back to your point of intention, it's like if you have the right intention and you know you're doing the work and you're doing your best, you say, Hey, I'm trying to figure this out. Like, I'm going to make mistakes, but I want to be on the right side. So let me know if I can be better. I think you got to take that approach.

Absolutely. It's called courage. You have to have- It's not fun to get criticized constantly. There are haters out there. If you go on your social media and write through it blue, they're gonna say blue, green. No, it's green. And there's always haters that are looking for an argument and looking to put somebody down. They're there.

It's gonna happen.

It's gonna happen. They have a low level of self-esteem. Many of them aren't doing anything with their own life. They're haters there. So yes, if you try anything new, you're gonna be hated. I've said over the years that mediocrity attacks excellence. That's what it is. Mediocrity always attacks excellence. So if you start walking towards excellence, mediocrity is gonna rise up and say, what the hell, who do you think you are? Why do you think you can have a big podcast? How do you think you can change? What are you doing? You can't do that. You came from this kind of-- no, no. Mediocrity is going to attack it, but you keep on going. And then after a while, mediocrity and the haters create a level of resistance that allow you to go higher. That's what life is. Whatever negative energy is coming at you, if you lift your vibration, you actually use it to go beyond. So at the end of the day, You thanked the haters.

You elevated me.

Yeah, you elevated, you brought deep forgiveness in my heart. You made me pray when I didn't feel like it. You made me finalize my vision when I was being lazy. You made me learn how to articulate better because of your hate coming in my direction, you chiseled me into a better person. Whereas if it would have been just an open door with no challenge, 'Cause we're not here to live a challenge-free life. Challenges make us strong. So the haters are just part of the challenge. So we can't just sit back and say, oh, well, that's like saying, well, when I get over my fear, and then I'm gonna do something. No, no, no, no, no. You're not trying to get over your fear. You walk in the direction, and then fear becomes excitement, and then excitement becomes enthusiasm.

But it doesn't change unless you're actually walking the direction. Yeah. Yeah. What's a mantra? all human beings could have in this time of like getting back to intention.

Okay, the mantra and the affirmation first have to come from context. Our context determines our perception. So our context must be, I am here to contribute to a kind and just global society. So that's the context. My context isn't, I'm just trying to get rich, or I'm just trying to be successful. That's within a context of I am here to participate and help create a kind and just global society. So if I have that context, then I can say, let me be an instrument of peace.

That could be the mantra.

Yeah, let me be an instrument of compassion. Let me be an instrument of intelligence and joy. Whatever quality is relevant at that particular moment. Today it would probably be peace and justice. Let me be an instrument of peace and justice. You see? So everybody can say that. Yeah. Yeah.

No matter if you're white, black, doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

That can be the mantra. Yeah. Tiffany, who's filming behind us, asked how can we be comfortable being uncomfortable during this time, knowing that we're trying to heal and trying to get back to a place of normalcy, but we may never be Normal again.

First of all, we don't want to go back to normal. We don't want to go back to the status quo. The status quo is where systemic racism lives and where injustice lives. So this is an opportunity, this flash point is an opportunity to change the normal and to change the status quo so that peace and justice begins to prevail in all of our institutions. institutions. Now, if you're walking in the direction of greatness, you walk in the direction of excellence, you're going to be uncomfortable. If you want to be an Olympic athlete, you got to get up early in the morning, you got to work out, you got to be uncomfortable for years. For years, periods of time of intensity in order to make those breakthroughs in your mind. Same thing with society. If in fact we're really going to dismantle racism, It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be easy to say, today, I'm just going to go to work, I'm going to get my paycheck, I'm going to fund my retirement program, I'm going to go to the baseball game, whenever we can go back to the baseball game. It's easy to do that. But if I really want to be about a kind and just global society, I'm going to have to be uncomfortable. That means I'm going to have to sacrifice my time. The word sacrifice this means to make sacred. So I'm going to have to make sacred my time, which means this period of time, I'm going to make sacred by either having an uncomfortable conversation, or calling my congressperson, or fill in the blanks. I'm going to be uncomfortable because no one changes the status quo and remains comfortable.

Sitting on your couch. Watching TV.

No, eating potato chips and getting fat. No, you gotta be uncomfortable. You know this. You talk to anyone who has made any changes in society, whether they're an inventor, whether they're a dancer, whether they're an athlete, whether they're a business person, they were uncomfortable. They had to do stuff that other people were unwilling to do.

Yeah, progress takes pain.

Yes.

It takes pain and- Sweet pain. Sweet pain. It was like- Lovely pain.

Yeah, when I'm in the gym and that guy's, It's sweet pain. You know, I'm doing that yoga, I'm holding that posture for that asana for another 30 seconds. Sweet. You know, so it's the same type of thing. We're not here to live a comfortable life. Matter of fact, the comfort zone is your enemy. Yeah. You know, that's, your enemy is the comfort zone because the good that we're seeking is outside of our present paradigm. It's in the realm of the unknown. That's where the good is. So you have a vision, you walk in that direction. What you don't know, you don't know shows up. You realize you didn't know that. You learn it and you keep on moving. So we're not here to make people comfortable. We're here to make people great.

Love that. Thank you for sharing all this. I think this is a great start to a dialogue for my audience. And I think my audience will have a lot of resources for people in the show notes to dive in on more of what our team has been educating ourselves on. But you have an amazing service you provide for people every week at Agape, where they can find here spiritual healing. They can find a community of people to share and create a safe dialogue with. They can learn on how to heal from this, but just lots of things in their life. And right now, you guys are doing Zoom, is that right? You're doing live stream Zoom.

Live stream and Zoom.

And where can we go to be a part of this? I've been there before, it's amazing, and I know a lot of people that go there religiously every week to listen to you and the community bring of experts to share. Where can we go and get a place of healing, of intentional love, of community?

I like that, intentional love. First of all, on the website, they can go to agapelive.com, Every Sunday, 6:45, 8:30, 11:00, they can see the services. The first service is a meditation service. I teach meditation.

I love this.

Yeah. And then the next two service carries the inspirational message aspect of life. Now when they go to the website, beginning in just a few days, there's going to be dialogues around people will be able to express without judgment, whatever it is that they're feeling during this time, whether it's COVID, whether it's racism, police brutality, without judgment in order to develop a higher dialogue. That's going to be facilitated by one of my practitioners, Aisha Mason, and others who are trained in having this kind of dialogue. So it's trained people that know how to create a safe space that's going to be up in just a couple of days. If they go to AgapeLive.com, they can get on the Zoom and actually be a part of that dialogue. I just released an app. It's free. You can up-level if you want, but it's a free app that's going to have inspiration, spiritual practices. They can go to MichaelBBeckwith.TV, subscribe to the app, and then go to the app store, Beckwith Inspires, MBB, and actually get the app. Now I'm going to be putting things on that on a regular basis. right on your phone, you'll be able to get whatever the latest practice is based on whatever's going on in the world at that particular time. On my Instagram Live, you know, I'm having dialogues. I mean, stuff's there all the time, but I've been having dialogues about this issue with people. I have one up there now with Ayana Laban Zadeh, Kevin Ross, and Ryan Bathay, and Ben Crump. came on to talk about what's going on right now. So they go to my Instagram, so there's stuff on Instagram, stuff on my YouTube page, there's stuff on the website, michaelbeckwith.com, they can get the app there. So we're trying to provide as much as we can to keep people inspired and out of fear, because here's the deal. You talk about the COVID virus, but the bigger virus is the virus of the mind, which is fear. That's the biggest virus. Now we know that the virus is not as deadly as was being taught because thousands of people have had it. You know, when you look at the research that's been done by these universities back in 2019, so that brought the mortality rate really low. So the biggest virus is fear.

Yeah.

People that die in a fear.

Yeah, the F word.

Yeah. So definitely we want people to wash their hands. We want people to wear masks when necessary. We want people to eat right, build up their immune system. I mean, if your immune system is strong, you know, I'll just say this. They're trying to mandate a bunch of stuff. They need to mandate that people take their vitamin C every day.

Exactly.

They need to mandate that they take their vitamin D. They need to mandate that they go outside and take their shoes off and get in the ground so the immune system starts to work because What's dangerous is that people are at home quarantining and they're not getting any new microbes and new germs to fight, the immune system shuts down. I know this isn't what we're supposed to be talking about. But anyway, all of that will be on my website. How do the immune system to stay.

Strong spiritually, mentally and physically? Yeah, the answer, you've got a lot of books. I like this one. I like short books because I'm a slow reader. But the answer is you is a good one. Heartsets and mindsets for self-discovery. You've got tons of resources, tons tons of books, tons of programming. And again, I love that you leave this weekly meditation for people to get back to a place of peace inside. We talk about healing on the inside first. You can start to heal the outside. It's hard to make change on the outside if you're not coming back to a place of peace and love and centeredness, which you provide people every single week, live and also through the app. How else can we support you in this mission?

You know what? You support me, support Agape by actually doing your inner work. If you tune in and I tell people, if you tune in and you listen and you actually just take one thing and practice it that week, you will see your life change. We're not here to be a bystander. We're here to be a participant. So if you hear something in this conversation and you say, oh, I can do that. You don't have to do everything. But if you take one thing and you actually do it, I tell people to do this for seven days. And then next week you'll hear something else. Actually practice it for seven days. Don't just say, oh, that was good. I liked the way he said that.

Implement.

Just actually do it. That's how you help. Because what are you doing? You're building a better being. It means you're building a better neighborhood, a better city, better state, better nation. So I teach, I'm not here to gain followers. I'm here to train spiritual leaders. I'm not looking for followers. Follow Beckwith? No, I'm not, that's not my thing. My thing is to train people to be leaders and to realize they have an inner authority within themselves. They could be just as tapped into the wisdom and the guidance and the intelligence that anyone is tapped into because this presence that's never an absence doesn't make special people. It makes everyone with equal access to the wisdom and the love and the peace, but you have to participate in it. You have to actually, you know, we can all be at the ocean and say, oh, we all have access to going swimming, but if you don't get in, you're not gonna get wet. Exactly. You know?

So we all have access.

You gotta dive in, man.

You gotta dive in, man.

That's it. So, you know, if they go to the website or Agape's Facebook page, they can see how to support us. It's very, very easy. There's ways to donate, there's ways to keep our ministries going, all of that. And we definitely are open to that, particularly now during this time. You know, and just we have morning prayer time at 8:00 a.m. Pacific time on the web.

Every day?

Every single day. You can go right on Agape's Facebook page. I have a practitioner leading that every day at 8:00 a.m. Noon meditation every day on the Facebook page. Friday night community gathering. 5:30 p.m. Pacific time every Friday. People are tuning in from all around the world. We have youth programs every Sunday. You know, so we're trying to be full service to keep the virus of fear out of people's minds, come back to hope, hope goes to faith, and then faith goes to conviction.

If you guys want to hear the previous interview we did, which has been one of my favorites on the podcast, I think it was about a year and a half ago we had you on. And if you want to hear Michael's three truths and his answer to the three truths question, his definition of greatness, make sure to go listen to that or watch that on YouTube. Michael, thank you so much for being a leader of love, of faith, of peace during this time and I hope we can do more. Hopefully we'll maybe we'll do an Instagram Live here soon after this comes out and-- why not? Talk about this more.

Let's keep the conversation going. We're just getting started. Thank you for the invitation.

Appreciate you, brother. Thanks. Thank you so much for watching this interview with Michael Beckwith. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe, leave a comment below, and like this video.

And check out my last interview with Kevin Hart also right here. There are no easy roads. So when I was coming up, and I'm not getting the auditions, I'm not.

Getting the opportunities, I had to say.

To myself, it's going to come.